How To Get Above Average Restaurant Website Conversion Rates

Are you running or managing a restaurant? Does your business have a website? If so, what are your restaurant website conversion rates?

Restaurants that have professionally designed websites do exponentially better than their counterparts with zero digital presence.

Just because you have been in business for 50 years doesn’t mean you don’t need a website!

If you’re using a 3rd party service, such as OpenTable, to handle your booking and reservation requests, you could be saving thousands of dollars each month in revenue – just by taking bookings through your website.

OpenTable charges from $1 – $1.50 per person for every reservation that is booked through their app or website, but you can completely eliminate this cost by using their embedded booking form on your website instead – since they don’t charge for those reservations.

Table of Contents:

Restaurant Website Conversion Rates

In this week’s blog post, we are going to take a look at some of the past restaurant websites we’ve completed for our clients and how well they did after we launched.

For the sake of this article, and client confidentiality, both of our example restaurants have been given names that have been completely made up. But, the data is related to real businesses and all stats are 100% authentic.

Something important to note about these restaurants is that they just opened up their doors and these statistics are based on their first month of business.

The two restaurants we will be covering are “The Wild Parlour” & “The Crimson Shrimp”. These restaurants are entirely new concepts & themes with no repeat customers or reviews.

We actually got these hilarious names courtesy of Fantasy Name Generators. I don’t know about you… but I would read a comic about the great adventures of “The Crimson Shrimp”. Even if that’s the worst superhero name in history!

The Wild Parlour: Case Study

The Wild Parlour is a restaurant in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. We did all of the website work for this amazing eatery, and we want to share our results with you and other restaurant/business owners in hopes that we can inspire you to renovate your online look.

Conversion Rates

We gauge conversion rates by taking statistics from Google Analytics and OpenTable and comparing them. The current industry average conversion rate on a restaurant website is 3%.

OpenTable reported 710 people whether in a group or as an individual reserved a table at The Wild Parlour. We found that the average amount of people in a reservation was 2.5, so that leaves us with 284 reservations for the month of April.

The restaurant had 284 reservations and just over 8500 visitors (from Calgary) to the website in their first month of business.

To calculate conversion rate, you divide the number of conversions you had by the number of visitors your website had, then multiple that number by 100.

Using this formula, we were able to record conversion rates of up to 3.3% in the first month! A rate 10% above industry average. In the first month.

Based on Calgary visitors only

The amount of people that reserved/booked a seat at The Wild Parlour

But how did we do it? We raised conversions by being as simple with our design as possible, while giving the most important information to users in an effective fashion.

Ultimately, we tailored our user interface to be as helpful and simple as possible resulting in a pleasurable user experience.

We didn’t include any noisy and distracting elements that could cause visitors to lose their attention on the goal at hand: making a reservation. We focused on guiding the visitor to the reservations pages, and menus that have been positioned conveniently on each page. We used a similar design to the Allora Italian Restaurant website we also recently launched.

Allora’s restaurant reservation system is fixed to the bottom of their pages, allowing for users to plan a reservation quickly and efficiently. Giving you all the more time to scope out that delicious menu.

This design has been crucial in improving conversion rates for our restaurant websites, and other service based businesses that take bookings.

The Stats

The website we did for The Wild Parlour is simplistic, eye catching, and ready to take reservations & bookings.

Below are some more statistics related to The Wild Parlour like bounce rate, page views, and an audience overview.

Disclaimer:Our traffic was inflated by about 1000 visitors due to testing and research in the first few days of the month. Additionally, when a restaurant opens up, it immediately has a chance of becoming a trend in the city. Traffic may begin to gradually die down overtime, as regulars settle in to their new spot, and newer crowds are less likely to check the restaurant out.

Audience Overview

Here is a screenshot from our Google Analytics dashboard. This screenshot shows several important stats belonging to The Wild Parlour. Some of the most important stats being Bounce Rate, New Users, and Page Views.

Bounce Rate = 2.4%

Our bounce rate for The Wild Parlour is sitting around 2.4% in total and 1.77% when we narrow our results down to just Calgary.

This is one of the lowest bounce rates I have ever seen!

The average pages per session are up there as well, sitting at around 4 pages/session. A proper business website can attract visitors and draw them in, and potentially make interactions you thought were never possible. One of the many benefits of a proper page structure.

Pages Views = 44,373

Did you know that 70% of smartphone users view restaurant menus on their phones? This could be one of the reasons for the high count in pages views going through The Wild Parlour.

We saw an astounding amount of traffic going through the Parlour’s site with over 44,000 pages views and 10,000 sessions! Not bad for the first month of a website’s launch.

Due to the popularity of The Wild Parlour’s website, we have no doubt that this restaurant will continue to succeed for many years to come. We look forward to helping them grow in any way they require!

After completing these projects, we realized we hold a key element over our competitors with the type of success rates we are seeing. After all, stats like New Users, Bounce Rate, & Conversion Rates speak for themselves!

The Crimson Shrimp: Case Study

Similar to The Wild Parlour – The Crimson Shrimp – is a restaurant located in Calgary, AB, and is doing amazing online.

We incorporated some of the same fundamentals that gave The Wild Parlour such a high rate of success, and we are going to go over how they did in their first month of business.

Conversion Rates

The Crimson Shrimp opened up on the 5th of March and their stats are based on roughly a month and a half’s worth of data. The Crimson Shrimp had 224 reservations from 561 guests which gave us an average conversion rate of around 2.65%.

That’s 11.6% below from the industry average of 3%, but that’s not too bad if you ask me.

Based on Calgary Statistics

The amount of people that reserved/booked a seat at The Crimson Shrimp

The Stats

They aren’t in a hotspot or downtown… but they are still managing to bring in a decent crowd, and their website does a great job.

We incorporated many of the same elements that made The Wild Parlour click with so many visitors and it seems to be paying off. Keeping things simple, elegant, and straight to the point really makes a difference. An effective user interface is ideal for a blooming restaurant.

As time goes on, The Crimson Shrimp will only see a rise in their conversion rates, as more people visit the website with the intention of making a booking, as opposed to “just checking it out”.

Audience Overview

Similar to the related section above – this is a screenshot of an overview of traffic statistics for The Crimson Shrimp. It is currently highlighting the 9,877 new users that have come through the website recently.

Bounce Rate = 1.36%

The Crimson Shrimp has an incredible bounce rate right now which is sitting at a jaw dropping 1.36%!

If we want to compare, most websites like to aim for a bounce rate under 60%. That means both The Crimson Shrimp and The Wild Parlour are absolutely killing it out there right now.

The Shrimp is also getting near the same number of pages per session, sitting around 3.96 pages/session.

Page Views = 41,105

The Crimson Shrimp may not be doing AS WELL as The Wild Parlour… but the site is currently averaging 41,105 page views over the past month and a half, and we are okay with that.

When it comes to restaurants… there are a ton of different factors that can affect these statistics.

Things like number of seats, location, pricing and cuisine all contribute to the success of a restaurant.

One way we can tell they are doing their job right, is by checking the website’s stats.

As we can see from the stats above – our two clients are booming with new business, their websites are performing exceptionally well, and they are retaining over 90% of their users throughout the websites.

I’d say that’s pretty damn good!

Conclusion

Restaurants have one of the highest failure rates out of any business on the market right now. Why hamper your chances of success by not investing in a good website?

Be wary of taking the cheaper routes as well. A site done by your buddy’s friend’s cousin that is on an old framework/CMS just won’t cut it. You need to have a modernized solution to your digital problems.

So the next time you’re thinking about your restaurant website – give us a shout! We will be sure to take care of you every step of the way. Our expertise in the biz is crucial to helping you get set up right.

Liam is a SEO/SEM Specialist & Web Designer from Calgary, Alberta. He maintains a passion for contemporary design and everything search engine related. He is an avid gamer, and enjoys collecting entertainment memorabilia.

If you have questions or inquires for Liam, feel free to contact him by email anytime liam@topshelfmedia.ca